Eamon McEneaney: A Man With aSecret

Published: September 27, 2001

Sometimes a wife learns things about her husband after he is gone, and this is how it has been with Eamon McEneaney's wife, Bonnie. She knew that Eamon, a senior vice president at Cantor Fitzgerald, had escaped from his office on the 105th floor after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, but she did not know he had been a hero.

"He saved the lives of 63 people," Ms. McEneaney said from their home in New Canaan, Conn. "They were hysterical, and he pulled them together and wet paper towels for them to put over their faces and made them form a human chain and took them down the stairs. All he ever told me was that he came down the stairs with some friends."

Eamon McEneaney, 46. A star lacrosse player at Cornell University who had been painted by LeRoy Neiman; a father of four; a man, his wife says, who was very much like a leprechaun. He is not on the list of the dead, but his family has released his obituary and his wife says she has had enough conversations with other Cantor Fitzgerald wives who spoke with their husbands at the time of the attack to know what happened: there was fire, the stairs were engulfed in flames and the heat was bad. Ms. McEneaney did not get the opportunity to speak to her husband. She was on the way to her office, and he left a message with her assistant: A plane had hit the building; tell Bonnie that he loved her, that he loved the children, and that he was on his way out.